GTA III on the PowerPC

[pakra]

Broken on 10.4.11, like before it gets farther then the 10.5.8. This is the terminal output (no crash report happens like on Leopard):

--snip--

Could you please not embed the verbose log in your forum replies? It makes the thread difficult to browse.
Anyways, I took a look at your crash report in the previous post. It seems that it screws up when accessing models\coll\peds.col, so make sure you haven't altered any paths and confirm that the file is there and readable.

Due to real life stuff I have not had time to properly look through the source code, so I was curious why I wasn't getting the PS2 texture conversion myself. For now I just disabled it so the game at least starts for those of you who were getting that crash.

Hi, starts without issue with the latest release on my PowerBook g4 - 1.83ghz Radeon 9700 on tiger, but glitches massively and performance are sub par. This is expected as per description, good to see it going tho! I will try with the g5 on leopard soon

Thanks for the test report and system specs! Tiger is known to produce glichy results but should work okay on Leopard and up.

 

[alex_free]

Could you please not embed the verbose log in your forum replies? It makes the thread difficult to browse.
Anyways, I took a look at your crash report in the previous post. It seems that it screws up when accessing models\coll\peds.col, so make sure you haven't altered any paths and confirm that the file is there and readable.

Due to real life stuff I have not had time to properly look through the source code, so I was curious why I wasn't getting the PS2 texture conversion myself. For now I just disabled it so the game at least starts for those of you who were getting that crash.



Thanks for the test report and system specs! Tiger is known to produce glichy results but should work okay on Leopard and up.

Haven’t modified anything. Sorry, edited the posts and totally understand thanks for getting back to me.

 

[Akulareb]

Another machine, Titanium 1.2ghz Radeon 9000, running 10.5.8 shows only a white screen and stays stuck there. Maybe the 9000 hasn’t got a full OpenGL 2.0 implementation?

 

[alex_free]

Another machine, Titanium 1.2ghz Radeon 9000, running 10.5.8 shows only a white screen and stays stuck there. Maybe the 9000 hasn’t got a full OpenGL 2.0 implementation?

It doesn't, but the actual issue is this is broken on case sensitive filesystems. I have the same issue, and if I modify file names I can get an actual loading screen but it's still broken.

 

[Wizzlemane96]

Thanks for the link. I tested the game from the Macintosh garden and it works! Granted lots of bugs but it is playable and very impressive! I’m running it on my G5 quad 2.5ghz with 10.5.8 and nvidia 7800gt.

Here’s a short gameplay video I uploaded.

 

[Akulareb]

It doesn't, but the actual issue is this is broken on case sensitive filesystems. I have the same issue, and if I modify file names I can get an actual loading screen but it's still broken.

I haven’t experienced this kind of issue, so I can’t really be much of a help sorry.

Ive run the alpha on my quad G5 x1900 8gb of ram on leopard and it finally runs.

Here are my findings:

Changes done on the re3.ini file makes things easy to try out.

I’m getting the same performance wether I set the resolution to 800x600, 1024x768 or 1280x1024. 1280x800 Fine too

Windowed mode creates most of the graphical glitches.

Also I’m getting a cleaner image with these settings :

FrameLimiter=1
Trails=1
PS2AlphaTest=1 (although with this off graphics are slightly more accurate on rendering but performance is affected)
VehiclePipeline=Neo
ColourFilter=0
NeoRoadGloss=0
NeoLightMaps=0
NeoRimLights=0

doors and parts of cars tend to disappear and general glitches in the rendering slow down a little the game.
also when driving the camera (or the car?) tends to shake a little.

EDIT
Limiting the cpu count to 2 reduces quite a lot the overall performances

 

[alex_free]

Another machine, Titanium 1.2ghz Radeon 9000, running 10.5.8 shows only a white screen and stays stuck there. Maybe the 9000 hasn’t got a full OpenGL 2.0 implementation?

GTA III Whitescreen Crash FIX

I was trying to play this port http://macintoshgarden.org/games/grand-theft-auto-iii-powerpc-alpha-version since the second it came out. I got the now infamous "whitescreen then crash" error. By digging deeper, running the executable in Terminal, I got an idea of what is wrong. There is...

forums.macrumors.com

 

[pakra]

Ooh, this is exciting! After months of on-and-off porting work, it is quite satisfying to see it run so smoothly on other people's machines that are far better than mine. The configuration tweaks are very helpful too, since I'm still wondering if it's the CPU or GPU that's making it so slow -- after all, the game has a minimum requirement of 500Mhz cpu -- but because of the experiment of limiting the CPU, and in addition when I made the audio work, the game slowed down, and in turn created new graphical artifacts I didn't see before. So perhaps the graphics do roughly match the capabilities of Tiger, and it's just a matter of CPU utilization, which would make sense seeing as the entire re3 project is patched together somewhat rough from disassembled code. For now though, when I get some more time, I would make the mouse work properly in-game (so it is possible to turn 360deg) and fix config file reset issues.

GTA III Whitescreen Crash FIX

I was trying to play this port http://macintoshgarden.org/games/grand-theft-auto-iii-powerpc-alpha-version since the second it came out. I got the now infamous "whitescreen then crash" error. By digging deeper, running the executable in Terminal, I got an idea of what is wrong. There is...

forums.macrumors.com

Ah, @alex_free don't worry, I wasn't annoyed, I just don't like scrolling through text logs that 99% tells me nothing. But you are most likely right, it probably has problems with case-sensitive filesystems, so thank you for the research. The casepath function itself is very... interesting to say the least. I will have to try that out when moving my OSX installation to a new partition this week.

 

[alex_free]

Ooh, this is exciting! After months of on-and-off porting work, it is quite satisfying to see it run so smoothly on other people's machines that are far better than mine. The configuration tweaks are very helpful too, since I'm still wondering if it's the CPU or GPU that's making it so slow -- after all, the game has a minimum requirement of 500Mhz cpu -- but because of the experiment of limiting the CPU, and in addition when I made the audio work, the game slowed down, and in turn created new graphical artifacts I didn't see before. So perhaps the graphics do roughly match the capabilities of Tiger, and it's just a matter of CPU utilization, which would make sense seeing as the entire re3 project is patched together somewhat rough from disassembled code. For now though, when I get some more time, I would make the mouse work properly in-game (so it is possible to turn 360deg) and fix config file reset issues.


Ah, @alex_free don't worry, I wasn't annoyed, I just don't like scrolling through text logs that 99% tells me nothing. But you are most likely right, it probably has problems with case-sensitive filesystems, so thank you for the research. The casepath function itself is very... interesting to say the least. I will have to try that out when moving my OSX installation to a new partition this week.

To answer some of your question. If you don’t have an OpenGL 2.1 GPU (what the renderer of the original re3 project was targeting/using) then whatever features are missing in your GPU’s hardware is being ran in software mode, essentially emulated on your PowerPC CPU.

Also, OpenGL 2.0 and above, even if your GPU supports it hardware wise, is only available on PowerPC Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Technically OpenGL 2.0 works on Intel Mac OS X Tiger, but it never was supported on PowerPC Tiger, only PowerPC Leopard added support for it.

OpenGL has worked like this since Silicon Graphics A.K.A. SGI, back when they weren’t bankrupt, where developing the N64 GPU API, and their workstation systems were being used to render the Jurassic Park T-Rex and other CGI scenes in movies.
Now that this is running on my mid 2005 iBook G4 1.33GHz G4 (3x the original required specs in pure speed) 1.5GB (maxed) RAM, and Radeon 9550 GPU (OpenGL 2.0 in Leopard, so close to 2.1, am not actually sure if a full OpenGL 2.1 PowerPC Mac OS X system exists), I should have quite a good time! Will report back.

I love this PPC Mac OS X ports renaissance. Simply unbelievable a bunch of random internet people are porting game after game to this platform. SM64EX, IOQuake3, GTA III, and maybe half life soon!

 

[sparty411]

To answer some of your question. If you don’t have an OpenGL 2.1 GPU (what the renderer of the original re3 project was targeting/using) then whatever features are missing in your GPU’s hardware is being ran in software mode, essentially emulated on your PowerPC CPU.

Also, OpenGL 2.0 and above, even if your GPU supports it hardware wise, is only available on PowerPC Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Technically OpenGL 2.0 works on Intel Mac OS X Tiger, but it never was supported on PowerPC Tiger, only PowerPC Leopard added support for it.

OpenGL has worked like this since Silicon Graphics A.K.A. SGI, back when they weren’t bankrupt, where developing the N64 GPU API, and their workstation systems were being used to render the Jurassic Park T-Rex and other CGI scenes in movies.

Another fun fact. 3DFX GLide was just hand picked super optimized OpenGL calls implemented in 90’s GPU hardware. Also Microsoft almost adopted OpenGL until they realized DirectX would ensure a monopoly of the PC gaming industry (until wine came along ).

Now that this is running on my mid 2005 iBook G4 1.33GHz G4 (3x the original required specs in pure speed) 1.5GB (maxed) RAM, and Radeon 9550 GPU (OpenGL 2.0 in Leopard, so close to 2.1, am not actually sure if a full OpenGL 2.1 PowerPC Mac OS X system exists), I should have quite a good time! Will report back.

I love this PPC Mac OS X ports renaissance. Simply unbelievable a bunch of random internet people are porting game after game to this platform. SM64EX, IOQuake3, GTA III, and maybe half life soon!

I hate to nitpick, but I think it's important not to conflate the Mobility Radeon 9550 with the desktop Radeon 9550. The Mobility 9550 only has a 64 bit memory bus, while the desktop version has a 128 bit memory bus.

 

[repairedCheese]

I hate to nitpick, but I think it's important not to conflate the Mobility Radeon 9550 with the desktop Radeon 9550. The Mobility 9550 only has a 64 bit memory bus, while the desktop version has a 128 bit memory bus.

This actually got me curious, and 5 seconds of googling later:

ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 Specs

ATI M12, 250 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 243 MHz, 64 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ATI Radeon 9550 Specs

ATI RV350, 250 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 200 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

I kind of forgot just how different mobile hardware could be from desktop hardware of the same name.

Also, OpenGL 2.0 and above, even if your GPU supports it hardware wise, is only available on PowerPC Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Technically OpenGL 2.0 works on Intel Mac OS X Tiger, but it never was supported on PowerPC Tiger, only PowerPC Leopard added support for it.

Thanks for the link. I tested the game from the Macintosh garden and it works! Granted lots of bugs but it is playable and very impressive! I’m running it on my G5 quad 2.5ghz with 10.5.8 and nvidia 7800gt.

Here’s a short gameplay video I uploaded.

And while I was at that, I dug around, and the only even remotely PPC Mac compatible hardware to support OpenGL 2.1 fully seems to be the Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition and the GeForce 7800 GT. They didn't ship with anything that has full support, and at this point, I'm guessing Leopard did most of it's 2.1 support on x86. Even the GeForce 6600 GT only seems to partially support 2.1, but maybe it and the Radeon 9600, which doesn't even support as much but still supports 2.0, is enough:

ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition Specs

ATI R423, 475 MHz, 16 Pixel Shaders, 6 Vertex Shaders, 16 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 256 MB GDDR3, 500 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT Specs

NVIDIA G70, 400 MHz, 20 Pixel Shaders, 7 Vertex Shaders, 20 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 256 MB GDDR3, 500 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT Specs

NVIDIA NV43, 500 MHz, 8 Pixel Shaders, 3 Vertex Shaders, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 128 MB GDDR3, 500 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ATI Radeon 9600 Specs

ATI RV350, 324 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 189 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

Another machine, Titanium 1.2ghz Radeon 9000, running 10.5.8 shows only a white screen and stays stuck there. Maybe the 9000 hasn’t got a full OpenGL 2.0 implementation?

While I'm at it, I can more or less confirm this conjecture. This does seem to be the case with both the Radeon 9000 and Mobility Radeon 9000. They only seem to support 1.4:

ATI Radeon 9000 Specs

ATI RV250, 250 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 1 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 200 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 Specs

ATI M9, 240 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 1 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 32 MB DDR, 200 MHz, 64 bit

www.techpowerup.com

I think the takeaway is, this isn't going to work on a lot of G4 Macs, or at not particularly well. Not unless it can be backported to OpenGL 1.4, at the very least. OpenGL 2.0 is a pretty hard cutoff for desktop systems. G5 systems may be better off, depending on how much of 2.1 it actually uses.

 

[pakra]

To answer some of your question. If you don’t have an OpenGL 2.1 GPU (what the renderer of the original re3 project was targeting/using) then whatever features are missing in your GPU’s hardware is being ran in software mode, essentially emulated on your PowerPC CPU.

I spent a fair amount combing over related documentation regarding OGL compatability on Tiger/Jaguar in preparation for the port. While I did find ogl2.1/3.0 functions used in the project, I was able to switch it off with some defines and could compile the project under OS X Tiger.

However, I'm not too sure about the bolded part -- looking at some other documents, it is clear Tiger does have software emulation, but only up to 1.2.1, and in fact, no graphics card seem to go above 1.5. Looking at Leopard instead reveals full 2.0 support in several graphics cards and the software renderer.

Since the game is even compilable under 1.5 OpenGL libraries by enabling certain extensions, I would assume it is running directly on OpenGL 1.5 without software emulation, and furthermore, when launching the game on my set up with 9800pro and Tiger, it says the 1.5 ATI opengl driver is being loaded. I don't really know why there are so many graphical glitches for Tiger's 1.5, it may well be just poorly optimized code that somehow interferes with the graphical output, which I would assume since, as mentioned before, the graphics got glitchier the more features I fixed.

 

[alex_free]

I spent a fair amount combing over related documentation regarding OGL compatability on Tiger/Jaguar in preparation for the port. While I did find ogl2.1/3.0 functions used in the project, I was able to switch it off with some defines and could compile the project under OS X Tiger.

However, I'm not too sure about the bolded part -- looking at some other documents, it is clear Tiger does have software emulation, but only up to 1.2.1, and in fact, no graphics card seem to go above 1.5. Looking at Leopard instead reveals full 2.0 support in several graphics cards and the software renderer.

Since the game is even compilable under 1.5 OpenGL libraries by enabling certain extensions, I would assume it is running directly on OpenGL 1.5 without software emulation, and furthermore, when launching the game on my set up with 9800pro and Tiger, it says the 1.5 ATI opengl driver is being loaded. I don't really know why there are so many graphical glitches for Tiger's 1.5, it may well be just poorly optimized code that somehow interferes with the graphical output, which I would assume since, as mentioned before, the graphics got glitchier the more features I fixed.

Could I get into that private repo?

 

[alex_free]

This actually got me curious, and 5 seconds of googling later:

ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 Specs

ATI M12, 250 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 243 MHz, 64 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ATI Radeon 9550 Specs

ATI RV350, 250 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 200 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

I kind of forgot just how different mobile hardware could be from desktop hardware of the same name.


And while I was at that, I dug around, and the only even remotely PPC Mac compatible hardware to support OpenGL 2.1 fully seems to be the Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition and the GeForce 7800 GT. They didn't ship with anything that has full support, and at this point, I'm guessing Leopard did most of it's 2.1 support on x86. Even the GeForce 6600 GT only seems to partially support 2.1, but maybe it and the Radeon 9600, which doesn't even support as much but still supports 2.0, is enough:

ATI Radeon X800 XT Mac Edition Specs

ATI R423, 475 MHz, 16 Pixel Shaders, 6 Vertex Shaders, 16 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 256 MB GDDR3, 500 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT Specs

NVIDIA G70, 400 MHz, 20 Pixel Shaders, 7 Vertex Shaders, 20 TMUs, 16 ROPs, 256 MB GDDR3, 500 MHz, 256 bit

www.techpowerup.com

NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT Specs

NVIDIA NV43, 500 MHz, 8 Pixel Shaders, 3 Vertex Shaders, 8 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 128 MB GDDR3, 500 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ATI Radeon 9600 Specs

ATI RV350, 324 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 2 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 189 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

While I'm at it, I can more or less confirm this conjecture. This does seem to be the case with both the Radeon 9000 and Mobility Radeon 9000. They only seem to support 1.4:

ATI Radeon 9000 Specs

ATI RV250, 250 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 1 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 64 MB DDR, 200 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 Specs

ATI M9, 240 MHz, 4 Pixel Shaders, 1 Vertex Shaders, 4 TMUs, 4 ROPs, 32 MB DDR, 200 MHz, 64 bit

www.techpowerup.com

I think the takeaway is, this isn't going to work on a lot of G4 Macs, or at not particularly well. Not unless it can be backported to OpenGL 1.4, at the very least. OpenGL 2.0 is a pretty hard cutoff for desktop systems. G5 systems may be better off, depending on how much of 2.1 it actually uses.

This should work on all G4 macs. For the people getting the whitescreen crash thats not a graphics issue: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gta-iii-whitescreen-crash-fix.2301214/

 

[alex_free]

I spent a fair amount combing over related documentation regarding OGL compatability on Tiger/Jaguar in preparation for the port. While I did find ogl2.1/3.0 functions used in the project, I was able to switch it off with some defines and could compile the project under OS X Tiger.

However, I'm not too sure about the bolded part -- looking at some other documents, it is clear Tiger does have software emulation, but only up to 1.2.1, and in fact, no graphics card seem to go above 1.5. Looking at Leopard instead reveals full 2.0 support in several graphics cards and the software renderer.

Since the game is even compilable under 1.5 OpenGL libraries by enabling certain extensions, I would assume it is running directly on OpenGL 1.5 without software emulation, and furthermore, when launching the game on my set up with 9800pro and Tiger, it says the 1.5 ATI opengl driver is being loaded. I don't really know why there are so many graphical glitches for Tiger's 1.5, it may well be just poorly optimized code that somehow interferes with the graphical output, which I would assume since, as mentioned before, the graphics got glitchier the more features I fixed.

Oh another thing, I once ran my SM64EX port (used an OpenGL 1.3 renderer or optional 2.0 one) and it ran on my iBook clamshell which has an OpenGL 1.1 GPU on Panther at like 1FPS.

 

[repairedCheese]

This should work on all G4 macs. For the people getting the whitescreen crash thats not a graphics issue: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gta-iii-whitescreen-crash-fix.2301214/

I suppose it really does come down to "how much of OpenGL 2 does it actually use?" Sounds like the answer is "not that much" which is excellent.

 

[iHorseHead]

When will you port GTA V to PowerPC?

 

[alex_free]

When will you port GTA V to PowerPC?

INB4 GTA V decomp

 

[09872738]

INB4 GTA V decomp

Would you mind granslating this for the uninitiated like me? 😇

 

[netsrot39]

Thanks for uploading the game to the Macintosh Garden. I gave it a try on my PowerBook G5 Early 2005 15" (A1106, 1.67 GHz) on Leopard and the game runs but is bairly playable. Like others have already pointed out, the game has various graphical glitches unfortunately. I will try the game on my iMac G5 iSight in the near future and see how it runs on a G5 under Leopard. It is really nice to see though this actually runs kind of on a PowerPC Mac!

 

[alex_free]

Would you mind granslating this for the uninitiated like me? 😇

GTA V needs to be decompiled for a port to be possible.

 

[netsrot39]

GTA V needs to be decompiled for a port to be possible.

I think he was referring to GTA Vice City. I doubt GTA V would run on anything PowerPC based.

 

[alex_free]

I think he was referring to GTA Vice City. I doubt GTA V would run on anything PowerPC based.

🤣🤣🤣

 

[netsrot39]

🤣🤣🤣View attachment 1794567

Oh okay you're right. I should rephrase that, I mean anything PowerPC Mac related but now I remember that Microsoft bought some G5s for Xbox 360 development back in 2005, so I imagine that in fact it could actually work with a decent G5 🤔 But who knows how many years it will take for someone to reverse engineer GTA V, I mean it almost took 20 years for a GTA3 code (which albeit the long wait is still an amazing achievement)

 

[alex_free]

Oh okay you're right. I should rephrase that, I mean anything PowerPC Mac related but now I remember that Microsoft bought some G5s for Xbox 360 development back in 2005, so I imagine that in fact it could actually work with a decent G5 🤔 But who knows how many years it will take for someone to reverse engineer GTA V, I mean it almost took 20 years for a GTA3 code (which albeit the long wait is still an amazing achievement)

My thoughts exactly. At the rate that re3 was finished, we only have 12 more years to go.